Wednesday, December 18, 2013

After Bali we should expect an influx of heavily subsidised
agri produce from outside. This will knock the stuffing out of Indian farmers
already reeling under adverse domestic policies.

The Indian media is presenting a
glorious conclusion of the Bali ministerial, saying the Indian stand had
prevailed and that India had
indeed bent the US
and EU to its will. This is the exact opposite of what has actually happened.

First, India was isolated,
partly by the machinations of the developed countries but also because it chose
to go it alone rather than with the bloc of developing countries who it has
rightly infuriated with its succumbing to US pressure. India giving in
will have negative implications for all of them. All the bravado we heard from
commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma days before about standing firm to
defend our food security vanished in Bali.

It’s remarkable that India
failed to bring to centrestage the unfulfilled issues of the Doha Round and no
attempt was made to link compliance with outstanding issues there with new
issues raised at Bali.

India
fell into the trap of discussing subsidy limits and de minimis support in
agriculture when it should have argued on the basis of welfare and human
rights. The Aggregate Measure of Support (AMS) calculated under the Agreement
on Agriculture applies to producer subsidies, that is subsidies to farmers,
which heaven knows the Food Security Act does not touch since, in a masterly
move, the FSA does not deal with the producers of food at all.

Any subsidy component under discussion here would be a consumer subsidy, not a
producer subsidy. It should have been argued as a welfare measure based on
human rights imperatives.

India should have argued that its appalling figures of hunger and malnutrition
amount to gross violation of the people’s right to food and any attempt by the
government to act on it cannot possibly be placed under the purview of WTO
sanctions. There was strong support for the India case from the UN Special
Rapporteur on Right to Food which the Indian team failed to build on.

As it stands, India
has failed to get its position accepted and it has accepted an interim
agreement, a peace clause, but with conditions. And it has ceded trade
facilitation. What has it come back with from Bali?

w Indian negotiators have placed the country’s entire stockholding of food
under external scrutiny and have lost sovereign control over decision-making
regarding buffer stocks. They have allowed the WTO’s Committee on Agriculture
(CoA) to monitor our grain stocks.

w India will have to freeze its minimum support price (MSP) and will be unable
to either raise the MSP or add new crops to its stocks after it has submitted
the complicated and embarrassingly detailed forms on public stocks held by
Central and state governments.
w Enormous paperwork and implementation costs have been added to maintaining
our public stocks, money that could have been spent more profitably elsewhere.

w India
will have to freeze the structure and modalities of food procurement now and
will be unable to make changes without the permission of the CoA. This is not
only humiliating, it has introduced the dangerous precedent of foreign
interference in our food security strategies. India
after Bali has lost the right to use public
food reserves as a plank of its food security.

w Having made a pig’s breakfast of the Bali negotiations, India has also
effectively sealed off for itself any avenues to support its farm sector, improve
food production and secure the livelihoods of its small and marginal farmers,
without invoking howls of protest from the CoA and the denizens of the WTO.

And Trade Facilitation stays in place as what we have given away at Bali. This will mean “facilitating” the entry of foreign
products into the Indian market. Opening India’s
market to agricultural produce has long been the goal of the large agriculture
exporting countries, especially the US and EU. That goal is close to
being realised. India
has so far managed to fend off large-scale dumping of agricultural produce but
that may be coming to an end.

After Bali we should expect an influx of
heavily subsidised agri produce from outside. This will knock the stuffing out
of Indian farmers already reeling under adverse domestic policies and the utter
neglect of the agriculture sector. Trade facilitation for genetically modified
products will almost certainly be on the menu, if for no other reason than to
break the back of the domestic resistance to GM crops and foods. But also
because the major agriculture exporters are sitting on stocks of GM corn and
soya and there are other products in the pipeline, all waiting for markets.

And the Indian farmer post-Bali? Unable to compete with the heavily subsidised
farm products from the US, Canada, Australia and the EU, the Indian
farmer will be forced to abandon his fields and swell the slums of cities.
Apart from the supply to the open market, who will produce the stocks of
cereals needed to keep the Food Security Act in motion? I can almost see the
Cargills and Bunges smiling in the wings.

The ill-conceived and opportunistic Food Security Act has cost the country very
dear. Together with the inept negotiations in Bali, it has put India in the
dock, under public scrutiny, tied its hands behind its back and taken away
options for the betterment of the farm sector and future food security. The
pale silver lining around this very black cloud is that there are four more
years of negotiations before a final settlement on the issue of public stock
holdings is reached. India
must put together its best brains to develop aggressive negotiating positions
well in advance, try to win back the support of the developing countries it has
ditched and face the next rounds of WTO discussions with the goal of recovering
what lost ground it can.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

On
the occasion of Gene Campaign’s 20th anniversary, a number of
experts from across India , came together to brainstorm on the policy changes
that were needed to make farming profitable and farmers prosperous.
Given below is the Charter of Demands that was formulated by the experts after
a daylong meeting.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

1.
The government must increase annual budgetary outlays for agriculture , by the
Union and state governments ,to 10 per
cent of India's gross domestic product (against less than 1.5 per cent at
present) for the next ten years. Of these outlays, between 60 per cent and 70
per cent should be reserved for rain-fed farming. systems.

2.
Programs for food security must include nutrition security. Fortification of
common staple foods with micro-nutrients should receive attention. A
comprehensive program to establish homestead gardens should be promoted to
boost household nutrition.

3.
All programs providing food and nutrition support to children must be linked to
their being registered in school and receiving regular health checkups.

4.Credit
and insurance facilities should be provided to all those who cultivate land and
keep livestock (not merely to land owners) by revamping the kisan credit
card and making insurance more widespread.

5.
Given the growing feminization of agriculture in India, there an urgent need to
: enforce property rights of women and encourage joint ownership of productive
assets, incentivize women’s access to credit cards (through an interest rate
subvention of at least one per cent) , invest in agriculture equipment suitable
for women.

6. Restore and reorient agricultural extension
services to promote high yielding, diversified and ecologically sustainable
agriculture. This should be backed by research support and indigenous
knowledge.

8.Government policies must strengthen and
promote a broad genetic base for agriculture and encourage conservation of
agro-bio-diversity, to build resilience in farming

9.
Launch a comprehensive soil testing program across India to implementlocation specific measures to restore and
improve soil health.

10.
Develop a policy and research framework for the development of agriculture in
the mountainous regions of India.

11.
Launch a water literacy campaign at policy and implementation levels that demand management is the main strategy for
overcoming water scarcity.

Water
management must be used as an entry point to improve livelihoods through
productivity enhancement, value addition, and income generating activities
through market-led diversification.

12.
The public distribution system must be diversified and decentralized.
Government policies should encourage procurement from about 50 km from the
points of consumption and the PDS should include a range of locally produced
foods.

13.
Divert a part of fertilizer subsidies to public investments in agriculture
leading to capital formation for strengthening alternative farming systems,
especially climate resilient agriculture.

14.
Encourage and incentivize states that reduce reliance on chemical inputs in
agriculture and encourage bio-organic farming systems.

15.
All government policies must be geared towards enabling the Indian farmer to
become an entrepreneur. Only then can those who are in the riskiest profession
in the world be empowered, making farming profitable and farmers prosperous.

About Me

Dr. Suman Sahai, who has had a distinguished scientific career in the field of genetics, is a recipient of the Padma Shri,the Borlaug Award, Outstanding Woman Achiever awards, the BirbalSahni Gold Medal and the Order of the Golden Ark .
Dr. Sahai is founder Chairperson of the Gene Campaign which is a leading research and advocacy organization, working on issues relating to food, nutrition and livelihoods. She has published extensively on science and policy issues and is a member of several national policy forums on scientific research and education, biodiversity and environment, biotechnology and bioethics as well as intellectual property rights.
Dr Sahai chaired India’s Planning Commission Task Force on ‘Agro biodiversity and Genetically Engineered Organisms’, for the XIth Plan. She was a member of the Steering Committee of the National Biodiversity Board , the Expert Committee on Biotechnology Policy and the Bioethics Committee of the Indian Council of Medical Research.She has served on the Research Advisory Committees of national scientific institutions.
Dr Sahai can be reached at www.genecampaign.org and mail@genecampaign.org